Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories by Joy Dettman Read Free Book Online Page A

toddler who clung to his mother’s leg, hiding his face in her skirt; a privilege he might retain for another month or two.
    â€˜Mugs, missus?’
    Speckled mugs, white and blue, their handles looped over the hawker’s fine brown fingers, clinked with a merry jingle against his many golden rings.
    â€˜How much?’
    A figure was quoted, accepted. The woman waited until the mugs were on the table and well away from his fingers before she touched them, checking them for chips. ‘I’ll have these three,’ she said, but when his back was turned, her treacherous eyes glanced again at the fine china cups.
    Shell pink things they were, frail, almost translucent, darker pink roses and sprays of bluebells creeping up to a handle tipped with gold. The girl’s gaze followed her mother’s. They saw so little beauty, and for a moment while the Indian was finding the sewing machine needles, they looked at those cups and forgot that their lives were brown.
    â€˜Black sewing machine thread, missus.’ A voice without substance from deep within the van, a gentle, musical voice, strangely pleasing to the ear. It whispered of other worlds, kinder worlds, of dainty teacups and ocean breezes, cool sand and seagulls soaring. For an instant, the woman wanted to climb aboard that van, hide amid the clutter, escape with her girl to a better place.
    The unborn one within felt her need, and kicked. It would be another boy. One more to hold her, to leg-rope her to that bloody kitchen. One more to suck her dry.
    â€˜Get down off there or I’ll box your bloody ears,’ she yelled. Her seven year old was climbing the red painted wheel. She scratched at her sweating armpit and her head, slapped at a small brown hand reaching out to touch the china cup.
    â€˜You’d better give me a reel of white thread while you’re in there and maybe a couple of yards of white lawn – and if you’ve got some nursery flannelette . . . ’
    A choice to make, the lightweight or the heavy? Price made her decision. ‘Have you got any trimming lace – just a narrow one?’ Small concession to an unwanted child, unnecessary, but it would only cost her sixpence. She wouldn’t need much. She lay the lace across her palm, looked at three before choosing the cheapest. Always the cheapest. Cheap ruled her life.
    â€˜Give me a yard and a half.’
    Later, while the nursery flannelette was being measured by the time-honoured rule of chin to thumb, she drew closer to the van, her hand shading eyes that looked beyond the hawker and into the dark interior, filled with odours from other lands.
    â€˜Pretty dress for the girlie, missus?’ he asked, the flannelette ripped straight, folded, placed in her string bag with the mugs.
    With none to grow into her hand-me-downs, the woman resented money spent on girls’ clothing. Maybe this new one would be a girl. She wanted another girl, God only knew why.
    â€˜No harm in looking, I suppose.’
    These were her man’s words, but he always ended up doing more than look. Once he’d bought her a brooch. It was gold-dipped, the ruby-red stone cut from glass, but for years she’s worn it proudly on the collar of her overcoat. Then the stone had fallen out and she’d put the brooch away in her drawer.
    A city girl, ill-prepared for this life, she’d been taken in hand by her mother-in-law, been tutored in economy, conditioned to hardship, taught everything her mother-in-law knew of meanness and bigotry. Don’t you go wasting Billy’s money on those falderals now. Don’t you encourage that Indian near the house . Let him open the gate for himself . The old woman’s words delivered with a nasal whine. Don’t you let that black heathen anywhere near my Billy’s boys .
    That first year she had asked her mother-in-law where the hawker went when he left their district, and why his goods were cheaper and of